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October 12, 2001/Tishri 25, 5762, Vol. 54, No. 5
Actor, musician tunes into Jewish heritage
LEISAH NAMM
Assistant Editor
Actor Carl Danielson compares the way Jews study Torah to the way actors study Shakespeare. "You rip it apart and you ask questions about it. ... You get in there and you fight about it and you discuss it. I love that."
Danielson, who stars in the Arizona Theatre Company's season opening production of "2 Pianos, 4 Hands," says the animated discussions were probably his strongest draw to Judaism. The actor, who attended 12 years of Catholic school, didn't know he was Jewish until he was nearly a teenager, when relatives told him his maternal grandmother was Jewish.
"I was so proud of it," he says. "I just thought it was the greatest thing in the world but I didn't know anything about it."
Danielson, who grew up in Oakland, Calif., began playing piano when he was 7 and was a professional musician by the time he was 12. He played piano during San Francisco Bay area church services and was a pianist for the Woodminster Amphitheater even before he could drive. But theater was really his love, Danielson, 39, says. "I had kind of a war going on in my life - I was a successful musician but I still always wanted to be an actor."
He received a bachelor's degree in music from the University of California, Berkeley, and studied acting at the Webber Douglas Academy of Drama in London.
At age 26, he had his feet in both musical and theatrical worlds, but says his "heart was really in the acting" and moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career.
"You know (how) you have these synchronistic moments when just everything you've never really paid attention to keeps coming your way?" he asks. After moving to Los Angeles, he received a call from members of a synagogue who had heard about his musical background and wanted him to provide music for their production of "Fiddler on the Roof." He had never stepped foot into a synagogue before and didn't know anything about Judaism, except that he was Jewish.
He says the congregation was very helpful and "loving and supportive." He ended up as musical director of the synagogue's High Holiday services and attended an Introduction to Judaism course at Los Angeles' University of Judaism.
His big acting break came in 1991 with a production of "Cole" at the San Jose Repertory Theatre and he started to get steady acting work. He soon moved to New York City and between acting jobs, he coaches singers and plays piano at auditions in New York - "that's what I call my 'waiting tables job,' " he jokes.
Although he says it's "nearly impossible to observe an observant Jewish lifestyle with being an actor" because of Friday night shows and Saturday matinees, when he is in between acting jobs, he doesn't work on Friday night or Saturdays. "Even when I'm working, I keep the spirit of Shabbos," he says. When the production of "2 Pianos, 4 Hands" was scheduled for the evening of Yom Kippur in Tucson, he took the holiday off to attend services and an understudy performed his role.
He finds some similarities to his character in "2 Pianos, 4 Hands." He plays the role of Richard Greenblatt, who, along with Ted Dykstra, wrote the play. The play is semi-autobiographical, based on Greenblatt and Dykstra's experiences as children who underwent serious musical training until their late teens when they both dropped piano and focused on the theater.
Danielson and the other actor, Mark Anders, play Greenblatt and Dykstra, but also switch into other characters throughout the play, playing such roles as each other's piano teachers, parents and piano students.
"It's fun to do a show like this where you actually get to use your music skills," Danielson says.
In the past, his musical skills have sometimes hindered his theatrical aspirations. "For years I had to convince people I wasn't a musician to get any acting roles because they see you as a pianist ... and that's what you do, you're a pianist, not an actor."
His Jewish identity fits well with his acting career, Danielson notes. "It's been very helpful finding that and marrying that with being an artist because I do think they kind of go hand-in-hand."
Throughout his life, he has studied other religions and he says that they tend to be about denial of the sensual pleasures of the world, which isn't true with Judaism. "Judaism has such an embrace of life," he notes. "You celebrate food, you celebrate sex, you celebrate community and joy ... that was very helpful to me as an actor, to have a philosophy that kind of celebrated it, and yet in an ethical, moral perspective."
Details
What: "2 Pianos, 4 Hands"
Who: Arizona Theatre Company
When: Through Oct. 21
Where: Herberger Theater Center, 222 E. Monroe St., Phoenix.
Cost: $25-$48
Call: 602-256-6995
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